Is Anson Mount anything like the rugged Civil War veteran he plays in AMC's Hell on Wheels?
—Ramon Sanchez, Austin, Texas
Mount, 38, from White Bluff, Tenn., remembers playing cowboy as a little boy, complete with a hat, sheriff's badge and little plastic six-shooter around his hip. But he says he's the opposite of his character on Hell On Wheels, a Confederate soldier with a quest for vengeance.
"My friends laugh when they see this," he says. "I am a goofball. I have my poker game with my buddies, I like science fiction, and I took all the accelerated classes in school. I am kind of a dork. I don't put on any tough-guy pretensions. I have gotten beat down in a bar fight before, but I studied a lot of [Clint] Eastwood for this role."